Solving Food Insecurity by Building Sustainable Systems | How you can help | Patti Robin and I

Join Patti Armbrister for the Composting Not Just GOOD But GREAT Workshop with the Wise Grower Guru!

IDK why it seems to me it's easiest for me to talk when I am either walking or driving, when I have my computer out it seems like my mind is blank! So today I am driving, I am so excited I just got back from having lunch with Patti Armbrister and Robin Kelson and it was so good to see them.

AERO - Alternative Energy Resource Organization

Robin has been so busy! She became one of the co-directors of AERO the Alternative Energy Resource Organization and they are working really hard to help change four food systems to sustainable food systems.

One question people ask me a lot about my Jeannette Rankin book is why do women make better representatives? And it's not necessarily that they are better but they do make up 50% of the population so they deserve 50% of the people and they tend to work more cooperatively finding solutions to problems.

What can we do to help solve food systems?

So we were saying what are the things we can do to help and I think I also talked about this with Bob Quinn, that Americans just don't spend enough of a percentage of their income on food. And that when Americans spent more of their paycheck on groceries they grew more of their own food. That up until the 1950s Montanans grew 70% of the food consumed here and that we need to get back to growing and eating locally.

Also food subsidies, and you might not think that food is that cheap right now but it is compared to what other people pay in other countries and what we have paid in the past. So that makes it really hard for organic farmers to compete. For local famers. We had a big conversation about wheat in Montana, we have huge ranches and none of the wheat grown in Montana is shipped out of Montana, probably none of it is eaten here. So that's part of the problem.

This article from 2015 shows that we export 80% of Montana wheat to Asia mostly Japan.

So she's working on

reducing food miles

trying to get rid of the subsidies to the big cheap corporations for food and helping some of these local farmers

a big piece is the government getting involved and forcing

she was talking about these farm unions that it is not ok for the giant corporations to own all these gigantic farms but no one is really enforcing it

This all leads to the poor health in the US. We could solve a lot of health issues in the US by and this is where Patti Armbrister was jumping in about how a lot of organic farms are struggling with their soil after just tilling and tilling and tilling and their not taking good enough care of the food soil web to keep growing food after 10 + years.

Anyway that's what this is supposed to be about Patti teaches this composting webinar training, that she does and she has done it in Whitefish at the Spirit farm in Whitefish I think she said it was an hour long workshop and then there is 45 minutes of questions people ask. She said at the workshop they go outside and do some things but a lot of it is online and if you are composting properly and creating these worm castings is just the biggest way to be successful

Also getting the most bang for your buck because if you are going to do the composting you might as well be getting the most nutrients you can from it!

And when I just talked to Chrisitina Mcinnis from...